Quote:
Originally Posted by glenc
The book "Longitude" also talks about Cloudesley Shovell.
"When returning with the fleet to England after the campaign to Toulon, Shovell's ship, HMS Association, at 8 pm on 22 October (November 2, by the modern calendar) 1707, struck on the rocks near the Isles of Scilly along with several other ships, and was seen by those on board HMS St George to go down in three or four minutes' time, not a soul being saved of 800 men that were on board. With four large ships (HMS Association, HMS Eagle, HMS Romney and HMS Firebrand) and nearly 2,000 sailors lost that night, the Scilly naval disaster was one of the greatest maritime disasters in British history. It was later determined that the main cause of the disaster was the navigators' inability to accurately calculate their longitude."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloudesley_Shovell |
Yep .. amazing !
The bureaucracy Harrison was confronted with when he attempted to show he'd solved the longitude problem, seemed to have conveniently completely forgotten the loss of these 2,000 souls !
It seems that preserving scientific intellectual arrogance of the day was more important to the committee than solving the problem. Had Harrison been educated in Astronomy, he may have had a better chance. Alas, such education was extremely limited to the very wealthy in those days.
The other thing I notice is that this timekeeping artefact was made 311 years before the above naval disaster ! It was probably the progenitor of the astronomical/mathematical bias of the 'Longitude' committee .. the bane of Harrison's life!
Thank goodness in modern times, we can appreciate the contribution precision engineering can make towards advancing science!
Awesome stuff !
Cheers